If you look at the ingredients list for a typical HRI frozen pizza, for example, an HRI frozen sausage pizza, at http://www.homeruninnpizza.com/frozen-pizza/details?alias=classic-sausage, you will see that the oil used in their dough is corn oil. Corn is a vegetable, so corn oil is generically a "vegetable oil". All of the HRI frozen pizzas use corn oil in the dough. If they are using soybean oil, which is most commonly referred to as a vegetable oil, I have not read anything to suggest that soybean oil is being used.

Peter

Peter,

Thanks for referencing the ingredients list for a HRI frozen sausage pizza. I see that the oiled used in their dough is corn oil. I know corn was a vegetable, but I didn’t know corn oil is generically a “vegetable oil”.

Thanks for referencing the ingredients list for a HRI frozen sausage pizza. I see that the oiled used in their dough is corn oil. I know corn was a vegetable, but I didn’t know corn oil is generically a “vegetable oil”.

Sometimes when you read articles and other items that are out of sequence timewise, it is hard to get the full picture as to how matters changed and progressed. So, it helps to read them in chronological order. In this vein, I went back and put all the articles and videos from the various HRI threads, including this one, in chronological order in order to see how things changed at HRI over time. The items might not be exactly in chronological order because there is often a lag between the event in question and its being publicized.

HRI has always made a big point of the fact that they use a puree because of its supposed better flavor. They say that it is a thick puree and they also water it down a bit and add a little bit of oregano and black pepper. The Classico puree is sold at some Wal-Marts so you might want to be on the lookout for that product at your local Wal-Mart. This is what that product looks like: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Classico-Heavy-Tomato-Puree-28-oz/19399875.

Peter

thank you so much Peter! you are the best!

Logged

"My Doctor says I swallow a lot of aggression. Along with a lot of pizzas!!"

Just finished eating some of the frozen HRI. This will probably get me in trouble, ( ), but to be honest, I found it really bland. I'm not sure how much the freezing has to do with that, or if pizzas from the shops taste that way too.

CDNpielover,

In the course of putting together Reply 304 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6112.msg242309.html#msg242309, I had occasion to revisit two of the main articles on the HRI frozen pizza operations, at http://www.bsimagazine.com/Features/Company%20Profiles/US%20Archive/At%20its%20new%20plant%20Home%20Run%20Inn%20makes%20frozen%20pizza%20the%20pizzaria%20way.aspx?p=1&cck=1 (estimated circa 1996) and at http://digital.bnpmedia.com/publication/?i=37488&p=14 (May 2010). These articles are spaced many years apart, and no doubt there were many changes between the times of these articles, but I think one might reasonably conclude that the doughs used for the HRI frozen pizza operations are not cold fermented, even though HRI says that for their frozen pizza operations they try to mimic what is done in their pizzerias. If there is any meaningful fermentation occurring in their frozen pizza facilities, it might well be an ambient temperature fermentation. If that is so, there might be limited flavor contribution to the finished baked crust beyond the flavor contributions of the large amount of yeast (I estimate above 2%) and the high amount of oil used to make the dough. As previously noted, I did not conclude that HRI was using an above average amount of salt. I am pretty sure that the bulk of the salt in most of HRI's frozen pizzas is in the dough. I played around with several scenarios involving different mozzarella cheeses and puree products, in relation to the HRI frozen cheese and pepperoni pizzas, and the results suggested around 2% salt in the dough. That is not an amount of salt that will come through particularly strongly on the palate if one tastes only the crust.

To add to the above, yesterday I dismembered the last frozen HRI pizza (a sausage pizza) that I purchased a while ago, and noted the quantities of cheese, sauce and sausage. I plan to report more on my findings soon, but while I was doing the dismemberment, I carefully examined and tasted the sauce. According to all of the information that has been reported by HRI on its sauce, it comprises only a puree (apparently a high-quality heavy puree, most likely from Stanislaus or Escalon), water, oregano, salt (which may be the small amount of salt that is in the canned tomatoes), and black pepper. I could not identify anything in the sauce as being oregano or black pepper, either visually or by taste. So, that may account for the blandness you mentioned. Also, the amount of sauce that I extricated from the most recent sausage pizza was quite small. However, is is possible that there was a sizable weight loss during the baking of the pizza.

As previously noted, I believe that the mozzarella cheese that HRI uses is a type of fairly basic mozzarella low moisture part-skim cheese that can be found in just about any supermarket, at least based on my analysis of the HRI Nutrition Facts. When I tasted the mozzarella cheese on the HRI pizza I dismembered, it did not strike me as being out of the ordinary. Hence, it may be somewhat lacking in the flavor department.

I have never had a real HRI pizza in one of its stores, but it appears that the doughs used in the stores are subjected to a reasonable period of cold fermentation. So, it is possible that a cold fermented clone, especially one that is jacked up with more oregano and other seasonings, will be an improvement over its frozen counterpart.

As previously reported, I conducted a series of experiments on two HRI frozen sausage pizzas in order to determine the quantities of cheese, sauce, sausage and crust. In order to do this, I dismembered each pizza into its component parts, using the methodology as described in Reply 277 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6112.msg241334.html#msg241334. After all of the weights were taken, I reassembled each pizza and noted the total reassembled weight of the pizza. For baking purposes, I placed each reassembled pizza on my perforated dark anodized disk on the middle oven rack position of my home electric oven and baked it for about 12 minutes at an oven temperature of around 475 degrees F, or until the rim and bottom of the pizza were a “golden” brown. As might be expected, my defrosted (reassembled) pizzas took less time to bake than if they were baked from the completely frozen state as instructed on the pizza boxes. All of the forgoing was done on two separate days.

For the second sausage pizza, I took one more weight that I did not take for the first sausage pizza. That was for the sausage after baking. To conduct this additional test, after the pizza was done baking, I removed all of the sausage pieces from the pizza again, and reweighed them in order to be able to calculate the weight loss for the sausage. This was an additional weight loss since all of the ingredients, including the sausage, previously experienced weight losses during the original baking of the pizza at HRI’s facilities before freezing and packaging. For both pizzas, I can only speculate what the total weight losses are from the original unbaked/pre-baked pizzas to their final fully baked state. I had hoped to be able to remove the mozzarella cheese from the second fully baked pizza for reweighing purposes but I discovered that the cheese and sauce had combined in such a way as to make it impractical to separate them.

I performed all of the abovestated activities in a very meticulous manner. I did this because I wanted to see how the data would compare for the two sausage pizzas that I put under the knife. I was not expecting any big surprises. So, it came as somewhat a shock to me when I discovered that the two sausage pizzas had materially different weights of sausage and cheese (highlighted below). I thought that I might have made a math error somewhere but when I added up all of the numbers again, there was no evidence of any errors. It was then that I decided to combine the weights of the sauce, cheese and sausage for both pizzas. To my surprise, the combined weights of those ingredients for the two sausage pizzas were very close (also highlighted below). Moreover, when I added in the weights of the two baked crusts, the totals for both pizzas as reassembled were also very close (highlighted below). All of this leads me to believe that the PLCs (Programmable Logical Controllers) and related sensors used in HRI’s frozen pizza facilities are able to track the weights of the pizzas and control the amounts of cheese and sausage such that the total weight of each pizza is close to its desired end weight. It is also possible that workers in the HRI facilities also do some monitoring of the pizzas as they pass through the system to be sure that they are in proper order.

I have set forth below the summaries of the data I collected for the two HRI frozen sausage pizzas. From that data, our members may be able to decide on what dough ball weight to use, and also how much sauce, cheese and sausage to use, as adjusted to reflect weight losses during baking.

Tomato puree on crust, posted on Home Run Inn Pizza facebook page on March 6th. This is what it said.

“We use tomato puree for our pizza sauce, not paste. That way, it’s richer and bursting with zesty flavor. You know it when you taste it. "Like" if Home Run Inn pizza's sauce is your favorite ingredient!”

My initial thought was to put the dismembered parts into the trunk of my car for suitable disposal in a field somewhere. But, having spent several dollars for the pizzas, I decided that the better course was to eat the evidence.

My initial thought was to put the dismembered parts into the trunk of my car for suitable disposal in a field somewhere. But, having spent several dollars for the pizzas, I decided that the better course was to eat the evidence.

Peter

Peter,

What you posted was funny! I agree, I would have eaten the evidence too!

Tomato puree on crust, posted on Home Run Inn Pizza facebook page on March 6th. This is what it said.

“We use tomato puree for our pizza sauce, not paste. That way, it’s richer and bursting with zesty flavor. You know it when you taste it. "Like" if Home Run Inn pizza's sauce is your favorite ingredient!”

Norma,

I suspect that that may be more true of a pizza baked in one of HRI's pizzerias, especially if more sauce is used there than on its frozen pizzas. I thought that the sauce of the HRI frozen pizzas that I tried was rather pedestrian. It might have something to do with how the sauce has to be applied by sauce dispensing equipment in the facilities where HRI makes its frozen pizzas. That equipment has to work almost flawlessly to be able to make 100 pizzas a minute and about 400,000 pizzas a day. You can't have pesky things like herbs and other seasonings get in the way of that volume of production.

Tomato puree on crust, posted on Home Run Inn Pizza facebook page on March 6th. This is what it said.

“We use tomato puree for our pizza sauce, not paste. That way, it’s richer and bursting with zesty flavor. You know it when you taste it. "Like" if Home Run Inn pizza's sauce is your favorite ingredient!”

Norma

If puree is paste with water added.......then how could puree be "richer" than paste. Oh, and "bursting" with more zesty flavor.

In one of his videos, he says that the sauce is made from tomatoes from a supplier in Modesto. I take that to mean Stanislaus because that is where its offices are.

Facebook appears to be a good marketing medium for HRI. Most people who go there, with the exception of Norma, of course, know next to nothing about pizza beyond personal tastes. I laugh when I look at the HRI Facebook page. It's all about hyping HRI and its pizzas.

I suspect that that may be more true of a pizza baked in one of HRI's pizzerias, especially if more sauce is used there than on its frozen pizzas. I thought that the sauce of the HRI frozen pizzas that I tried was rather pedestrian. It might have something to do with how the sauce has to be applied by sauce dispensing equipment in the facilities where HRI makes its frozen pizzas. That equipment has to work almost flawlessly to be able to make 100 pizzas a minute and about 400,000 pizzas a day. You can't have pesky things like herbs and other seasonings get in the way of that volume of production.

I would vote for the crust to be the favorite ingredient.

Peter

Peter,

After I saw that picture of the crust with the tomato puree applied on facebook I thought about your post where you said there wasn’t much sauce on your frozen pizzas. I also suspect it is true that the pizzas baked in one of HRI’s pizzerias would have more sauce applied. I can understand that the equipment has to work almost flawlessly to be able to make all of those pizzas. I sure would really like to be able to see how that happens so fast. How do the members of this forum then decide how much sauce to apply if anyone wants to make an attempt on an HRI pizza?

How would you describe the crusts of the frozen HRI pizzas you had? I am still interested in really how those crusts are in texture and taste.

In one of his videos, he says that the sauce is made from tomatoes from a supplier in Modesto. I take that to mean Stanislaus because that is where its offices are.

Facebook appears to be a good marketing medium for HRI. Most people who go there, with the exception of Norma, of course, know next to nothing about pizza beyond personal tastes. I laugh when I look at the HRI Facebook page. It's all about hyping HRI and its pizzas.

Peter

Peter,

I might have to disagree with Joe Perrino, or at least say I really can‘t tell much of any difference if the right spices are added. I wonder if Joe ever heard of the “Standard of Identity” for pizza sauces. If HRI is using a Stanislaus product I do agree with him that they are good.

I agree with you about the HRI facebook page. I just saw on facebook today that Buddy’s is adding a new location and people are already getting excited about it.

[quote author=norma427 link=topic=6112.msg242531#msg242531 date=1363049099How would you describe the crusts of the frozen HRI pizzas you had? I am still interested in really how those crusts are in texture and taste.

[/quote]

Norma, I know you were asking Pete, but I had some over the weekend and can share my thoughts. The crust is very oily and very flaky. I could see visble flaky layers in the dough. Some of these layers "bent up" along the rim of the crust, almost as if the layers were all formed parallel to each other and then the edges were bent up to form the rim. Also, not only were the layers visible, but I could even peel them apart -- so I know I'm not just making this up.

The dough reminds me kind of like phyllo actually.

I'm not sure how the layers get in there. I know Pete mentioned earlier in the thread that the dough wasn't laminated. I'm not sure how else they could get the dough like that though. Maybe the hot pressing has something to do with it?